Efforts are constantly being made to improve the efficiency of processing time in state of the art computers. In the area of optical computing, semiconductor circuitry is operated at optimized semiconductor rates, and electronic signals are changed to optical signals by the computer's semiconductor micro-circuitry in an effort to speed up the computer processing time. Still, the computer processing rate could be made faster if electronic signals are independently converted into optical signals using a dedicated electro-mechanical process prior to receipt and/or use of the electronic signal by the computer. A high speed optical signal is provided as an input to the computer's central processing unit (CPU). The high speed optical signal is used to govern the processing rate within the computer's CPU.
Optics have also been used in measurement circuits. A corrective circuit, as was applied with some notoriety in connection with the Hubbell telescope, used interference optics as a means for fine measurement of a curved surface. Optical interferometry has also been used to determine subtle changes in the optical refractive index of optically transmissive gases as a measure of pressure or concentration.
While optics have been heretofore used primarily in areas of audio signal processing, image processing and also in detection and measurement circuitry, there has been little application in the use of optical processing for signal generation and signal processing beyond the transformation of an electronic signal in a computer's internal signal processing circuitry.